Norwegian "Lebensborn" Children Sue the State

He was supposed to be a very special child. But he was rejected all his life. Paul Hansen was born in the Nazis" "Lebensborn" programme to produce Aryan children. His mother was Norwegian; his father a German Luftwaffe pilot. Paul didn't learn this until his early 20s.

Paul Hansen, Lebensborn child: "At the time, I was ashamed that I had a German father. Today I"ve accepted it, and I'm even a little proud of it."

Paul Hansen, was born in 1942 in the Lebensborn delivery ward in Oslo. Many other children were conceived and born in the same way.

The Nazis wanted to breed what they considered racially "superior" children. The aim was to entrust leadership of Norway to these "Aryans" after the war, or to have them and their mothers move to Germany to bring more "Nordic blood" into the German Reich.

Kare Olson, historian: "The Nazis said these children should be seen as "German-oriented advance posts in the Norwegian nation"."

Kare Olson wrote a book titled Krigensbarn - which means "War Children". In it, he says that when Germany lost the war, everything changed.

A Norwegian commission decided that the children should remain in Norway, rather than being taken to Germany. Many of the mothers were so ashamed that they gave their children up for adoption. Some were put in orphanages, others in lunatic asylums.

Paul Hansen: "I was transferred from the Lebensborn home Goodhaab into an asylum, together with some others. We were locked up together with mentally ill people. And we had to eat and go to the toilet in the same room."

In the Emma Hjort insane asylum near Oslo in 1947, mentally retarded children and adults lived crowded together in appalling sanitary conditions. The children were often tied to their beds for hours.

This is where Paul Hansen had to live, too. The chairman of the Norwegian War Children Association, Tor Brandacher, says this has marked him for life.

Brandacher, Chairman, Norwegian War Children Association: "It was the biggest shame to be here. Everybody who was here was looked upon as garbage outside these buildings. This was the biggest shame in Norway."

Struggling for public recognition

Tor Brandacher wanted to change that. A Lebensborn child himself, he has been struggling for public recognition since the 1980s, publicizing lives like Paul Hansen's.

Tor Brandacher has traced many of the war children and has now filed a class action suit against the Norwegian state on behalf of 130 of them. They are demanding compensation for damages - up to a quarter of a million Euros or 220 thousand Dollars per person. But the Norwegian government doesn"t want to pay.

Frode Elgesen, attorney for the Norwegian government:

"The government"s position is that these cases are time-bound and cannot be accessed in a legal framework."

But the Lebensborn children are determined to fight and are counting on the media.

While the court case was being heard in Oslo, a very effective photo exhibition on war children was opened. The pictures by photographer Einar Bangsund - he himself a Lebensborn child - show the faces of the German-Norwegian war children.

Paul Hansen: "It"s very important that we are now together in a group and can fight for our interests together."

For the first time, Paul Hansen feels no longer excluded, but taken seriously. The cases are being discussed intensely in public. And now the Norwegian government has officially apologized to the Lebensborn children - after almost 60 years.